The current society is an information society, and a user can exchange information with other users through a mobile device at any moment, or control execution of application programs in the mobile device. In some cases, a result of the information exchange or the application program execution needs to be stored in the mobile device, and kept in agreement with the same type of information in other devices. For example, an address book is stored in a mobile phone and a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), and the same address book is also stored in a Personal Computer (PC) or a notebook computer in the office and at the home, and the user expects that address book information in these devices can be kept in agreement with each other, that is, when address book information in one of the devices is changed, address book information in other devices can also be correspondingly updated.
The address book is a basic function of various services, a user generally has multiple address books, for example, an address book stored in a telephone set, an address book in a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card, a service based address book, and an address book provided by an Internet Service Provider (ISP), and the user needs to process the multiple address books. For facilitating the processing by the user, a uniform address book standard is needed, and many standards exist in the prior art, which are briefly introduced below.
1. Converged Address Book (CAB)
The CAB enables users to backup their address books to a network, and retrieve the address books from the network, amend address book content, and exchange with other contacts, or update personal information. In addition, the CAB supports multi-terminal access, and can be multiplexed by multiple different service engines, and span multiple different networks.
2. vCard
The vCard is a format of a contact widely used in Internet, which enables automation of exchange of personal and service information (for example, telephone number and address) through the network, and the included information can be, for example, a picture, an organization logo, and a Web address. The vCard is referred to as an electronic commerce card, which is mainly used to record contact information on an address book, and is convenient for data exchange between different devices. The vCard format is briefly introduced below, which includes the following components.
vCard Object: a vCard data stream may include one or more vCard Objects, and one vCard Object in the data stream is labeled as data beginning with “BEGIN:VCARD”, and ended with “END:VCARD”, and if the data stream does not include the “END:VCARD”, it is indicated that the vCard Object includes all data from the “BEGIN:VCARD” to the end of the data stream.
vCard Property: vCard is a set of one or more Properties, one Property is a uniquely designated value, and a series of Properties may form a group in the vCard.
A format of the vCard Property is as follows:
PropertyName[‘;’ PropertyParameters]‘:’ PropertyValue, in which:
{circle around (1)} PropertyName and PropertyParameters are case insensitive.
{circle around (2)} PropertyParameters is optional, may be zero or more, and are separated from the ProperyName with a semicolon, and separated from the Property Value with a colon.
{circle around (3)} vCard may be presented in multiple rows. See vCard Specification for reference.
For example, in TEL;HOME:+86111222333, the PropertyName is TEL, the PropertyParameters is HOME, and the PropertyValue is +86111222333.
{circle around (4)} Encoding: a default encoding manner of the vCard is 7-Bit. The default encoding manner may be changed by using an ENCODING Property parameter. A value thereof may be BASE64; QUOTED-PRINTABLE; or 8BIT.
The parameter may be used in any Property.
The QUOTED-PRINTABLE encoding manner is briefly described below, and relevant documents may be referred to for more details: ASCII displayable characters are substantially kept unchanged. Unicode characters or UTF8 encoding characters are represented with equal signs plus corresponding hexadecimal codes. For example, CHARSET is that UTF8 codes 0xE5, 0×AE, and 0xB6 corresponding to UTF8 character=E5=AE=B6=E4=BA=BA represent a Chinese character “home”, and the others represent a Chinese character “person”. In addition, if any, the displayable ASCII code is output intact.
{circle around (5)} Character Set: a default character set is ASCII, which can be changed with a CHARSET parameter. A value of the parameter may be all character sets registered by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The parameter can be used for any Property, but some of them do not function.
3. hCard is an open format for presenting personal address book information, which can be mapped with a standard vCard (RFC2426) protocol at 1:1, and the vCard format is based on a structure of the hCard. Relevant documents may be referred to for the specific structure.
The vCard or hCard format is a format supported by a conventional network phone book, such as Personal Information Manager (PIM), and the CAB network phone book system uses the CAB phone book format. The prior art has no technical solution for intercommunicating phone books between a CAB network and a third party network (for example, a PIM network). When a user of a conventional network phone book activates a CAB network phone book service, an address book previously stored in the conventional network phone book system cannot complete the inheritance of the corresponding account to the CAB network phone book system at the system side, thereby causing inconvenience to the user.